Solyndra Seeds Doubts About Photovoltaic Manufacturability

Ask a venture capitalist about the collapsing green-energy sector, exemplified in the successive bankruptcies of Solyndra and Beacon Power, as well as the downgrading of First Solar, and you'll hear long soliloquies about the collapsing popularity of green-tech/clean-tech initiatives, and the failure to develop sound business plans.

Ask a Libertarian politician the same thing, and be prepared to hear about the inherent evil of federal subsidies and loan guarantees. Ask a globalist, and the person with Asian expertise is bound to tell you how the ability of China to emulate manufacturing processes has doomed the US alternative energy market.

Thin-film photovoltaic modules from First Solar.

These answers all are correct, in part. But ask a designer with a background in either civil engineering or energy electronics, and you'll also hear that much of the boom in energy startups in the past decade has focused too excessively on unique point solutions to problems of solar conversion, point-source storage of transient energy such as wind-farm energy, and other proprietary inventions that look great in demos, but seem to exist in a vacuum. In fact, CNet blogger Martin LaMonica says the problem of scaling up is so ubiquitous, it may even affect the electric vehicle industry.

In one sense, you could say that the Department of Energy's smart grid initiative has been one of the only alternative energy efforts that look to large-scale systems first, but even the smart grid software projects fail to take into account the antiquated state of the nation's energy distribution network. Point solutions for residence or utility companies often fail on several levels. Can the proprietary design really be manufactured in a cost-effective manner? Will its ergonomics fit in known energy subsystems? Can the concept be emulated easily by an Asian company with lower costs of manufacturing?

Startups developing products like solar PV panels or radical flywheels could have stolen practicality lessons from the hardware startups of the last decade. Executives trying to launch semiconductor or OEM system companies in the new millennium automatically faced prejudice from venture backers, who favored software companies following the telecom crash of 2001. Offering a unique chip or consumer device was not good enough to win market favor. Corporate founders had to ask, can this chip be cheaper than alternative solutions? Is it easy to reverse-engineer? Will the functions become obsolete before the market develops?

Manufacturability issues
A friend of mine with decades of experience in solar design attended Solyndra's coming-out party in 2005, and told me off the record that he was impressed by the cylindrical panels based on CIGS thin film the company had designed, "but I was aghast at all the praise and no tough questions at the rollout. The first thing many of us outside the media were thinking was, can you really build these? And where is the protection from having your cost of production undercut? I didn't hear anyone in the press or investment banks voice these concerns."

A colleague and I were talking about power companies and their sources, and about point solutions. I was arguing strongly that we needed a LOT more nuclear plants in this country; he said power companies needed diverse sources.

I don't think either of us is wrong.

I would not want to be one of a power company's diverse alternative sources; wind farms in Washington State were shafted this summer when they were asked to shut down because there was too much hydro power available. The investment to plant a wind farm is too great for this type of "request". The power company should have been selling the excess to other states.

TJ, I'm personally not a huge fan of large centralized nuke or coal plants, but I think you have identified the source of the problem for decentralized point sources, and it's one T. Boone Pickens referred to when giving up on his wind farms. The power grid in this country is antiquated, and the DOE's funding of smart grid software only solves half the problem. The physical transmission lines and their support facilities need to be restructured and prepared for an underlying smart grid, and where wiill the capital investment come from for that? Intriguing questions, all.

I think the article (and its title) are exemplary of a focus on USA & the west alone. When I look how the Solar manufacturing industry here in India and in China are exploding (without much subsidy, but with encouragements like SEZ and low laber cost) then I think you can understand why I read the title as:

I have no doubt of the strong flow of PV panels from India and China where there is a decent ROI for the systems installed with these (low cost) panels, so there is no doubt about viability, even *without* local subsidies. Just allow feed-in tarif at the mid day price level and you will see how the ROI period shrinks to make the PV industry a success, just that manufacturing will be done elsewhere, so we know where we need to focus to be successful!

Most new technologies have had a history of many companies entering the market with many of them failing or being absorbed or merged. Consider automobiles and aircraft in the early 20th century, also radio and TV manufacturers.

In the case of solar, there is a good reason for public subsidy , given the externalities of fossil fuel combustion. These cost the public in many direct and indirect ways.

As foir First Solar, their product has a special problem resulting from the cadmium telluride active material. Years from now when the panels are discarded, they will very likely end up busted in a dump. We conducted a series of experiments where we put broken samples of CdTe PV panels in aqueous solutions with pH values of 7 (distilled water), 6, 5, 4, and 3. for about 4 months.

In all but the distilled water, the cadmium leached out into solution and for pH values of 5 and below virtually ALL the cadmium went into solution. Given the toxicity of Cd and the tons of panels that will end up in dumps, that is a serious threat to groundwater.

The manufacturers have promised to collect the dead panels in 25 or 30 years and reclaim the cadmium, but the funding for this is far from sufficient and who knows what will happen between now and then?

Customers and regulatory agencies are getting wise to the CdTe problem and turning to other less poisonous kinds of panels.

cvandewater, that was precisely why I made the point about China virtually owning the PV panel market. There are only rare instances where a company outside Asia can show manufacturing advantages. But that does not give Chinese companies a guaranteed market either, as SunTech's recent stumbles show. The alternative-energy market is demonstrating growing pains worldwide.

J-allen, very good points about cadmium telluride. I notice that many people in the thin-film industry outside solar panels have been touting the use of lead-free perovskites and similar RoHS-compliant materials. It would be good if green energy companies emphasize the green nature of the entire manufacturing process - which includes addressing the waste concerns of an old panel, just as assuredly as nuclear must include the waste.

The analysis should have been simple for Solyndra, the DOE and everybody here forward... How can you blow a half a billion dollars when given:

Standard Solar PV Panels = $2500 per kilowatt

Solyndra Solar PV Panels = $6000 per kilowatt

The long term analysis of "payback", that point at which the cost of a standard solar kW unit of panels supplying all that "free" power" long enough that your cost of energy = about 12 cents per killowat hour, paying for the initial investment is about 10 to 18 years with standard solar.

So a Solyndra panel would "payback in 24 to 34 years".. Nobody knows if they would even last that long... The material studies are theoretical at least and based on accelerated environmental testing at best. Talk to battery companies about their predictive powers when it comes to end of life...

The moment the cost per Solyndra Solar Kw got a penny higher than the standard tech Kw, alarms should have been going of in everybody's head and big RED LETTERS should have been showing up on spreadsheets.

Bottom line... Electric Utility Power is a commodity item not a vanity item.. Except in special cases (like a PV powered Oil Well) the actual rate of return on PV energy does yet not pay for itself at 13 to 18% efficiency. Maybe it will at 45%...

Some of solar manufacturing challenges may be that executives and engineers were successful in other "similar" industries and want to apply the designs and process they know from their last industries to the new design. On the surface it makes sense, the design or process worked before, should work now, it will give us a big head start. I've seen this approach fail in multiple industries because differences between the old industry and the new industry that are not recognized. When those differences are addressed, they may lead to a different solution.

As engineers, we must always be objective about defining design requirements and being open minded about possible solutions once we have acomplete set of requirements.Hang on tight to your problem solving abilities fellow engineers, remember your failures and how you worked through them to success. Be willing to put your greatest past success aside and objectively move forward to address the new challenges.The new challenges won’t be any easier than the set of challenges associated with your greatest success were. Why should any of us think we can get away without new serious critical thinking to address the new issues and challenges at hand, and not just spending a bunch of money trying to prove that because it worked on x it will work on y.

Jeff_A - Wow, those words ought to be set in stone. Strategies are not always transferrable. It reminds me of an article The Economist ran last week, studying the EU-ECB plan for bailing out Greece and Italy in detail. The government of China and various sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East expressed reticence at putting the money into the new European bonds, because the bonds were structured just like Collateralized Debt Obligations from the U.S. mortgage crisis in 2008 - i.e., Greek toxic debt was sliced up, tranched, and hidden in larger Euro-debt. Gee whiz, the new investors didn't like that idea, and CDOs worked so well the first time! As you said, every new market and new design opportunity should be greeted with a completely fresh perspective.

The standards electrical machines and components are required to meet in the food processing industry are far more stringent than those in traditional plant construction. For specialized production environments such as these, components must not only resist thermal and physical stresses, but they must also be resistant to the chemicals used to sterilize equipment.

The word “smart” is becoming the dumbest word around. It has been applied to almost every device and system in our homes. In addition to smartphones and smart meters, we now hear about smart clothing and smart shoes, smart lights, smart homes, smart buildings, and every trendy city today has its smart city project. Just because it has a computer inside and is connected to the Web, does not mean it is smart.

Was Steve Job’s signature outfit of a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers the secret behind his success? Maybe, or maybe not, but it was likely an indication of a decision-making philosophy that enabled him to become one of the most successful innovators of all time.

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